 | CHAPTER XIII. The deerslayer: or, The first war-path |  |
13. CHAPTER XIII.
Can stop th' invader's force;
Nor swelling seas, nor threatening skies,
Prevent the pirate's course:
Their lives to selfish ends decreed,
Through blood and rapine they proceed;
No anxious thoughts of ill-repute,
Suspend the impetuous and unjust pursuit;
But power and wealth obtained, guilty and great,
Their fellow-creatures' fears they raise, or urge their hate.”
Congreve.
By this time, Deerslayer had been twenty minutes in the
canoe, and he began to grow a little impatient for some signs
of relief from his friends. The position of the boat still prevented
his seeing in any direction, unless it were up or down
the lake; and, though he knew that his line of sight must
pass within a hundred yards of the castle, it, in fact, passed
that distance to the westward of the buildings. The profound
stillness troubled him also, for he knew not whether
to ascribe it to the increasing space between him and the
Indians, or to some new artifice. At length, wearied with
fruitless watchfulness, the young man turned himself on his
back, closed his eyes, and awaited the result in determined
acquiescence. If the savages could so completely control
their thirst for revenge, he was resolved to be as calm as
themselves, and to trust his fate to the interposition of the
currents and air.
Some additional ten minutes may have passed in this
quiescent manner, on both sides, when Deerslayer thought
he heard a slight noise, like a low rubbing against the bottom
of his canoe. He opened his eyes of course, in expectation
of seeing the face or arm of an Indian rising from the water,
and found that a canopy of leaves was impending directly
over his head. Starting to his feet, the first object that met
his eye was Rivenoak, who had so far aided the slow progress
of the boat, as to draw it on the point, the grating on
alarm. The change in the drift of the canoe had been altogether
owing to the baffling nature of the light currents of
air, aided by some eddies in the water.
“Come,” said the Huron, with a quiet gesture of authority
to order his prisoner to land; “my young friend has sailed
about till he is tired; he will forget how to run again, unless
he uses his legs.”
“You've the best of it, Huron,” returned Deerslayer,
stepping steadily from the canoe, and passively following his
leader to the open area of the point; “Providence has helped
you in an onexpected manner. I'm your prisoner ag'in,
and I hope you'll allow that I'm as good at breaking gaol,
as I am at keeping furloughs.”
“My young friend is a moose!” exclaimed the Huron.
“His legs are very long; they have given my young men
trouble. But he is not a fish; he cannot find his way in the
lake. We did not shoot him; fish are taken in nets, and not
killed by bullets. When he turns moose, again, he will be
treated like a moose.”
“Ay, have your talk, Rivenoak; make the most of your
advantage. 'T is your right, I suppose, and I know it is
your gift. On that p'int there'll be no words atween us;
for all men must and ought to follow their gifts. Howsever,
when your women begin to ta'nt and abuse me, as I suppose
will soon happen, let 'em remember that if a pale-face struggles
for life so long as it's lawful and manful, he knows how
to loosen his hold on it, decently, when he feels that the
time has come. I'm your captyve; work your will on
me.”
“My brother has had a long run on the hills, and a
pleasant sail on the water,” returned Rivenoak, more mildly,
smiling, at the same time, in a way that his listener knew
denoted pacific intentions. “He has seen the woods; he
has seen the water; which does he like best? Perhaps,
he has seen enough, to change his mind, and make him
hear reason.”
“Speak out, Huron. Something is in your thoughts,
and the sooner it is said, the sooner you'll get my answer.”
“That is straight! There is no turning in the talk of
my pale-face friend, though he is a fox in running. I will
his eyes are not shut. The Sumach is poorer than ever.
Once she had a brother and a husband. She had children,
too. The time came, and the husband started for the happy
hunting-grounds, without saying farewell; he left her alone
with his children. This he could not help, or he would not
have done it; le Loup Cervier was a good husband. It was
pleasant to see the venison, and wild ducks, and geese, and
bear's meat, that hung in his lodge, in winter. It is now
gone; it will not keep in warm weather. Who shall bring
it back again? Some thought the brother would not forget
his sister, and that, next winter, he would see that the lodge
should not be empty. We thought this; but the Panther
yelled, and followed the husband on the path of death.
They are now trying which shall first reach the happy
hunting-grounds. Some think the Lynx can run fastest,
and some think the Panther can jump the farthest. The Sumach
thinks both will travel so fast and so far, that neither
will ever come back. Who shall feed her and her young?
The man who told her husband and her brother to quit her
lodge, that there might be room for him to come into it.
He is a great hunter, and we know that the woman will
never want.”
“Ay, Huron, this is soon settled, accordin' to your notions;
but it goes sorely ag'in the grain of a white man's
feelin's. I've heard of men's saving their lives this-away,
and I've know'd them that would prefer death to such a sort
of captivity. For my part, I do not seek my end; nor do I
seek matrimony.”
“The pale-face will think of this while my people get
ready for the council. He will be told what will happen.
Let him remember how hard it is to lose a husband and a
brother. Go: when we want him, the name of Deerslayer
will be called.”
This conversation had been held with no one near but the
speakers. Of all the band that had so lately thronged the
place, Rivenoak alone was visible. The rest seemed to
have totally abandoned the spot. Even the furniture, clothes,
arms, and other property of the camp had entirely disappeared,
and the place bore no other proofs of the crowd that
had so lately occupied it, than the traces of their fires and
marks of their feet. So sudden and unexpected a change
caused Deerslayer a good deal of surprise and some uneasiness,
for he had never known it to occur, in the course of
his experience among the Delawares. He suspected, however,
and rightly, that a change of encampment was intended,
and that the mystery of the movement was resorted to,
in order to work on his apprehensions.
Rivenoak walked up the vista of trees, as soon as he
ceased speaking, leaving Deerslayer by himself. The chief
disappeared behind the covers of the forest, and one unpractised
in such scenes might have believed the prisoner left to
the dictates of his own judgment. But the young man, while
he felt a little amazement at the dramatic aspect of things,
knew his enemies too well to fancy himself at liberty, or a
free agent. Still he was ignorant how far the Hurons meant
to carry their artifices, and he determined to bring the question,
as soon as practicable, to the proof. Affecting an indifference
he was far from feeling, he strolled about the area,
gradually getting nearer and nearer to the spot where he
had landed, when he suddenly quickened his pace, though
carefully avoiding all appearance of flight, and, pushing
aside the bushes, he stepped upon the beach. The canoe
was gone, nor could he see any traces of it, after walking
to the northern and southern verges of the point, and examining
the shores in both directions. It was evidently removed
beyond his reach and knowledge, and under circumstances
to show that such had been the intention of the
savages.
Deerslayer now better understood his actual situation.
He was a prisoner on the narrow tongue of land, vigilantly
watched beyond a question, and with no other means of escape
than that of swimming. He again thought of this last
expedient, but the certainty that the canoe would be sent in
chase, and the desperate nature of the chances of success,
deterred him from the undertaking. While on the strand,
he came to a spot where the bushes had been cut, and
thrown into a small pile. Removing a few of the upper
branches, he found beneath them the dead body of the Panther.
He knew that it was kept until the savages might
find a place to inter it, when it would be beyond the reach
castle, but there all seemed to be silent and desolate; and a
feeling of loneliness and desertion came over him to increase
the gloom of the moment.
“God's will be done!” murmured the young man, as he
walked sorrowfully away from the beach, entering again
beneath the arches of the wood; “God's will be done, on
'arth as it is in heaven! I did hope that my days would
not be numbered so soon; but it matters little, after all. A
few more winters, and a few more summers, and 't would
have been over, accordin to natur'. Ah's me! the young
and actyve seldom think death possible, till he grins in their
faces, and tells 'em the hour is come!”
While this solioquy was being pronounced, the hunter
advanced into the area, where to his surprise he saw Hetty
alone, evidently awaiting his return. The girl carried the
bible under her arm, and her face, over which a shadow of
gentle melancholy was usually thrown, now seemed sad and
downcast. Moving nearer, Deerslayer spoke.
“Poor Hetty,” he said, “times have been so troublesome,
of late, that I'd altogether forgotten you; we meet, as it
might be, to mourn over what is to happen. I wonder what
has become of Chingachgook and Wah!”
“Why did you kill the Huron, Deerslayer,” returned the
girl, reproachfully. “Don't you know your commandments,
which say, `Thou shalt not kill!' They tell me
you have now slain the woman's husband and brother.”
“It's true, my good Hetty,—'tis gospel truth, and I'll not
deny what has come to pass. But, you must remember,
gal, that many things are lawful in war, which would be
onlawful in peace. The husband was shot in open fight;
or, open so far as I was consarned, while he had a better
cover than common;—and the brother brought his end on
himself, by casting his tomahawk at an unarmed prisoner.
Did you witness that deed, gal?”
“I saw it, and was sorry it happened, Deerslayer; for I
hoped you wouldn't have returned blow for blow, but good
for evil.”
“Ah, Hetty, that may do among the missionaries, but
'twould make an onsartain life in the woods. The Panther
craved my blood, and he was foolish enough to throw arms
'Twould have been ag'in natur' not to raise a hand in such
a trial, and 'twould have done discredit to my training and
gifts. No, no; I'm as willing to give every man his own,
as another; and so I hope you'll testify to them that will
be likely to question you as to what you've seen this day.”
“Deerslayer, do you mean to marry Sumach, now she
has neither husband nor brother to feed her?”
“Are such your idees of matrimony, Hetty? Ought the
young to wive with the old—the pale-face with the red-skin
—the Christian with the heathen? It's ag'in reason and
natur', and so you'll see, if you think of it a moment.”
“I've always heard mother say,” returned Hetty, averting
her face, more from a feminine instinct, than from any
consciousness of wrong, “that people should never marry,
until they loved each other better than brothers and sisters;
and I suppose that is what you mean. Sumach is old, and
you are young.”
“Ay, and she's red, and I'm white. Besides, Hetty;
suppose you was a wife, now, having married some young
man of your own years, and state, and colour—Hurry Harry,
for instance,”—Deerslayer selected this example, simply
from the circumstance that he was the only young man
known to both,—“and that he had fallen on a war-path,
would you wish to take to your bosom, for a husband, the
man that slew him?”
“Oh! no, no, no,” returned the girl, shuddering. “That
would be wicked, as well as heartless! No Christian girl
could, or would, do that. I never shall be the wife of Hurry,
I know; but were he my husband, no man should ever
be it again, after his death.”
“I thought it would get to this, Hetty, when you come to
understand sarcumstances. 'Tis a moral impossibility that
I should ever marry Sumach; and, though Indian weddin's
have no priests, and not much religion, a white man who
knows his gifts and duties, can't profit by that, and so make
his escape at the fitting time. I do think death would be
more nat'ral like, and welcome, than wedlock with this
woman.”
“Don't say it too loud,” interrupted Hetty, impatiently;
“I suppose she will not like to hear it. I'm sure Hurry
am feeble-minded; and I am sure it would kill me to think
he'd prefer death to being my husband.”
“Ay, gal; you an't Sumach, but a comely young Christian,
with a good heart, pleasant smile, and kind eye. Hurry
might be proud to get you, and that, too, not in misery and
sorrow, but in his best and happiest days. Howsever, take
my advice, and never talk to Hurry about these things; he's
only a borderer, at the best.”
“I wouldn't tell him, for the world!” exclaimed the girl,
looking about her, like one affrighted, and blushing, she
knew not why. “Mother always said young women shouldn't
be forward, and speak their minds before they're asked;—
oh! I never forget what mother told me. 'Tis a pity Hurry
is so handsome, Deerslayer; I do think fewer girls would
like him then, and he would sooner know his own mind.”
“Poor gal, poor gal, it's plain enough how it is; but the
Lord will bear in mind one of your simple heart, and kind
feelin's! We'll talk no more of these things; if you had
reason, you'd be sorrowful at having let others so much
into your secret. Tell me, Hetty, what has become of all
the Hurons, and why they let you roam about the p'int, as
if you, too, was a prisoner?”
“I'm no prisoner, Deerslayer, but a free girl, and go
when and where I please. Nobody dare hurt me! If they
did, God would be angry—as I can show them in the Bible.
No—no—Hetty Hutter is not afraid; she's in good hands.
The Hurons are up yonder in the woods, and keep a good
watch on us both, I'll answer for it, since all the women
and children are on the look-out. Some are burying the
body of the poor girl who was shot last night, so that the enemy
and the wild beasts can't find it. I told'em that father
and mother lay in the lake, but I wouldn't let them know in
what part of it, for Judith and I don't want any of their
heathenish company in our burying-ground.”
“Ah's! me;—Well, it is an awful despatch to be standing
here, alive and angry, and with the feelin's up and furious,
one hour, and then to be carried away at the next, and
put out of sight of mankind in a hole in the 'arth! No one
knows what will happen to him on a war-path, that's sartain.”
Here the stirring of leaves and the cracking of dried
twigs interrupted the discourse, and apprised Deerslayer of
the approach of his enemies. The Hurons closed around
the spot that had been prepared for the coming scene, and
in the centre of which the intended victim now stood, in a
circle—the armed men being so distributed among the feebler
members of the band, that there was no safe opening
through which the prisoner could break. But the latter no
longer contemplated flight; the recent trial having satisfied
him of his inability to escape, when pursued so closely by
numbers. On the contrary, all his energies were aroused,
in order to meet his expected fate, with a calmness that
should do credit to his colour and his manhood; one equally
removed from recreant alarm and savage boasting.
When Rivenoak reappeared in the circle, he occupied his
old place at the head of the area. Several of the elder warriors
stood near him; but, now that the brother of Sumach
had fallen, there was no longer any recognised chief present,
whose influence and authority offered a dangerous
rivalry to his own. Nevertheless, it is well known that
little which could be called monarchical, or despotic, entered
into the politics of the North American tribes, although
the first colonists, bringing with them to this hemisphere
the notions and opinions of their own countries, often dignified
the chief men of those primitive nations with the titles
of kings and princes. Hereditary influence did certainly
exist; but there is much reason to believe it existed rather
as a consequence of hereditary merit and acquired qualifications,
than as a birth-right. Rivenoak, however, had not
even this claim—having risen to consideration purely by
the force of talents, sagacity, and, as Bacon expresses it, in
relation to all distinguished statesmen, “by a union of great
and mean qualities;” a truth of which the career of the
profound Englishman himself furnishes so apt an illustration.
Next to arms, eloquence offers the great avenue to popular
favour, whether it be in civilized or savage life; and
Rivenoak had succeeded, as so many have succeeded before
him, quite as much by rendering fallacies acceptable to his
listeners, as by any profound or learned expositions of
truth, or the accuracy of his logic. Nevertheless, he had
claims to its possession. Like most men who reason more
than they feel, the Huron was not addicted to the indulgence
of the mere ferocious passions of his people: he had been
commonly found on the side of mercy, in all the scenes of
vindictive torture and revenge that had occurred in his tribe,
since his own attainment to power. On the present occasion,
he was reluctant to proceed to extremities, although
the provocation was so great; still it exceeded his ingenuity
to see how that alternative could well be avoided. Sumach
resented her rejection more than she did the deaths of her
husband and brother, and there was little probability that
the woman would pardon a man who had so unequivocally
preferred death to her embraces. Without her forgiveness,
there was scarce a hope that the tribe could be induced to
overlook its loss; and even to Rivenoak, himself, much as
he was disposed to pardon, the fate of our hero now appeared
to be almost hopelessly sealed.
When the whole band was arrayed around the captive, a
grave silence, so much the more threatening from its profound
quiet, pervaded the place. Deerslayer perceived that
the women and boys had been preparing splinters of the fat
pine roots, which he well knew were to be stuck into his
flesh, and set in flames, while two or three of the young
men held the thongs of bark with which he was to be bound.
The smoke of a distant fire announced that the burning
brands were in preparation, and several of the elder warriors
passed their fingers over the edges of their tomahawks,
as if to prove their keenness and temper. Even the knives
seemed loosened in their sheathes, impatient for the bloody
and merciless work to begin.
“Killer of the Deer,” recommenced Rivenoak, certainly
without any signs of sympathy or pity in his manner, though
with calmness and dignity; “Killer of the Deer, it is time
that my people knew their minds. The sun is no longer
over our heads; tired of waiting on the Hurons, he has
begun to fall near the pines on this side of the valley. He
is travelling fast towards the country of our French fathers;
it is to warn his children that their lodges are empty, and
that they ought to be at home. The roaming wolf has his
den, and he goes to it, when he wishes to see his young.
villages, and wigwams, and fields of corn; the good spirits
will be tired of watching them alone. My people must go
back, and see to their own business. There will be joy in
the lodges when they hear our whoop from the forest! It
will be a sorrowful whoop; when it is understood, grief will
come after it. There will be one scalp-whoop, but there
will be only one. We have the fur of the Muskrat; his
body is among the fishes. Deerslayer must say whether
another scalp shall be on our pole. Two lodges are empty;
a scalp, living or dead, is wanted at each door.”
“Then take 'em dead, Huron,” firmly, but altogether
without dramatic boasting, returned the captive. “My hour
is come, I do suppose; and what must be, must. If you are
bent on the tortur', I'll do my indivours to bear up ag'in it,
though no man can say how far his natur' will stand pain,
until he's been tried.”
“The pale-face cur begins to put his tail between his
legs!” cried a young and garrulous savage, who bore the
appropriate title of the Corbeau Rouge; a sobriquet he had
gained from the French, by his facility in making unseasonable
noises, and an undue tendency to hear his own
voice: “he is no warrior; he has killed the Loup Cervier
when looking behind him not to see the flash of his own rifle.
He grunts like a hog, already; when the Huron women
begin to torment him, he will cry like the young of the
catamount. He is a Delaware woman, dressed in the skin
of a Yengeese!”
“Have your say, young man; have your say,” returned
Deerslayer, unmoved; “you know no better, and I can overlook
it. Talking may aggravate women, but can hardly
make knives sharper, fire hotter, or rifles more sartain.”
Rivenoak now interfered, reproving the Red Crow for his
premature interference, and then directing the proper persons
to bind the captive. This expedient was adopted, not
from any apprehensions that he would escape, or from any
necessity, that was yet apparent, of his being unable to endure
the torture with his limbs free, but from an ingenious
design of making him feel his helplessness, and of gradually
sapping his resolution, by undermining it, as it might be,
little by little. Deerslayer offered no resistance. He submitted
ligaments of bark, which were bound around them, by order
of the chief, in a way to produce as little pain as possible.
These directions were secret, and given in the hope that the
captive would finally save himself from any serious bodily
suffering, by consenting to take the Sumach for a wife. As
soon as the body of Deerslayer was withed in bark sufficiently
to create a lively sense of helplessness, he was literally
carried to a young tree, and bound against it, in a way
that effectually prevented it from moving, as well as from
falling. The hands were laid flat against the legs, and
thongs were passed over all, in a way nearly to incorporate
the prisoner with the tree. His cap was then removed, and
he was left half-standing, half-sustained by his bonds, to face
the coming scene in the best manner he could.
Previously to proceeding to any thing like extremities, it
was the wish of Rivenoak to put his captive's resolution to
the proof, by renewing the attempt at a compromise. This
could be effected only in one manner, the acquiescence of
the Sumach being indispensably necessary to a compromise
of her right to be revenged. With this view, then, the woman
was next desired to advance, and to look to her own interest;
no agent being considered as efficient as the principal
herself in this negotiation. The Indian females, when girls,
are usually mild and submissive, with musical tones, pleasant
voices, and merry laughs; but toil and suffering generally
deprive them of most of these advantages by the time
they have reached an age which the Sumach had long before
passed. To render their voices harsh, it would seem
to require active, malignant passions, though, when excited,
their screams can rise to a sufficiently conspicuous degree
of discordancy to assert their claim to possess this distinctive
peculiarity of the sex. The Sumach was not altogether
without feminine attraction, however, and had so recently
been deemed handsome in her tribe, as not to have yet learned
the full influence that time and exposure produce on
man as well as on woman. By an arrangement of Rivenoak's,
some of the women around her, had been employing
the time in endeavouring to persuade the bereaved widow
that there was still a hope Deerslayer might be prevailed on
to enter her wigwam, in preference to entering the world of
scarcely justified. All this was the result of a resolution
on the part of the chief to leave no proper means unemployed,
in order to get the greatest hunter that was then
thought to exist in all that region, transferred to his own
nation, as well as a husband for a woman who he felt would
be likely to be troublesome, were any of her claims to the
attention and care of the tribe overlooked.
In conformity with this scheme, the Sumach had been secretly
advised to advance into the circle, and to make her
appeal to the prisoner's sense of justice before the band had
recourse to the last experiment. The woman, nothing loth,
consented; for there was some such attraction, in becoming
the wife of a noted hunter, among the females of the tribes,
as is experienced by the sex in more refined life, when they
bestow their hands on the affluent. As the duties of a mother
were thought to be paramount to all other considerations,
the widow felt none of that embarrassment in preferring
her claims, to which even a female fortune-hunter
among ourselves, might be liable. When she stood forth,
before the whole party, therefore, the children that she led
by the hand fully justified all she did.
“You see me before you, cruel pale-face,” the woman
commenced; “your spirit must tell you my errand. I have
found you; I cannot find le Loup Cervier, nor the Panther.
I have looked for them, in the lake, in the woods, in the
clouds. I cannot say where they have gone.”
“No man knows, good Sumach, no man knows,” interposed
the captive. “When the spirit leaves the body it
passes into a world beyond our knowledge, and the wisest
way, for them that are left behind, is to hope for the best.
No doubt both your warriors have gone to the happy hunting-grounds,
and at the proper time you will see 'em ag'in,
in their improved state. The wife and sister of braves
must have looked forward to some such tarmination of their
'arthly careers.”
“Cruel pale-face, what had my warriors done that you
should slay them? They were the best hunters, and the
boldest young men of their tribe; the Great Spirit intended
that they should live until they withered like the branches
of the hemlock, and fell of their own weight.”
“Nay, nay, good Sumach,” interrupted the Deerslayer,
whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such
hyperbole, with patience, even though it came from the torn
breast of a widow,—“Nay, nay, good Sumach, this is a little
out-doing red-skin privileges. Young man was neither, any
more than you can be called a young woman; and as to the
Great Spirit's intending that they should fall otherwise than
they did, that's a grievous mistake, inasmuch as what the
Great Spirit intends, is sartain to come to pass. Then,
ag'in, it's plain enough neither of your fri'nds did me any
harm; I raised my hand ag'in 'em on account of what they
were striving to do, rather than what they did. This is
nat'ral law, `to do, lest you should be done by.' ”
“It is so. Sumach has but one tongue; she can tell but
one story. The pale-face struck the Hurons, lest the Hurons
should strike him. The Hurons are a just nation;
they will forget it. The chiefs will shut their eyes, and pretend
not to have seen it. The young men will believe the
Panther and the Lynx have gone to far-off hunts; and the
Sumach will take her children by the hand, and go into the
lodge of the pale-face, and say, `See; these are your children—they
are also mine; feed us, and we will live with
you.' ”
“The tarms are onadmissible, woman; and, though I
feel for your losses, which must be hard to bear, the tarms
cannot be accepted. As to givin' you ven'son, in case we
lived near enough together, that would be no great expl'ite;
but as for becomin' your husband, and the father of your
children, to be honest with you, I feel no callin' that-a-way.”
“Look at this boy, cruel pale-face; he has no father to
teach him to kill the deer, or to take scalps. See this girl;
what young man will come to look for a wife in a lodge
that has no head? There are more among my people in
the Canadas, and the Killer of Deer will find as many
mouths to feed, as his heart can wish for.”
“I tell you, woman,” exclaimed Deerslayer, whose imagination
was far from seconding the appeal of the widow,
and who began to grow restif under the vivid pictures she
was drawing, “all this is nothing to me. People and kindred
must take care of their own fatherless, leaving them
I have no offspring, and I want no wife. Now, go away,
Sumach; leave me in the hands of your chiefs; for my colour,
and gifts, and natur' itself, cry out ag'in the idee of
taking you for a wife.”
It is unnecessary to expatiate on the effect of this down-right
refusal of the woman's proposals. If there was any
thing like tenderness in her bosom,—and no woman was,
probably, ever entirely without that feminine quality,—it all
disappeared at this plain announcement. Fury, rage, mortified
pride, and a volcano of wrath, burst out at one explosion,
converting her into a sort of maniac, as it might be at the
touch of a magician's wand. Without deigning a reply in
words, she made the arches of the forest ring with screams,
and then flew forward at her victim, seizing him by the
hair, which she appeared resolute to draw out by the roots.
It was some time before her grasp could be loosened. Fortunately
for the prisoner, her rage was blind, since his total
helplessness left him entirely at her mercy; had it been better
directed, it might have proved fatal before any relief
could have been offered. As it was, she did succeed in
wrenching out two or three hands'-full of hair, before the
young men could tear her away from her victim.
The insult that had been offered to the Sumach was deemed
an insult to the whole tribe; not so much, however, on
account of any respect that was felt for the woman, as on
account of the honour of the Huron nation. Sumach, herself,
was generally considered to be as acid as the berry
from which she derived her name; and now that her great
supporters, her husband and brother, were both gone, few
cared about concealing their aversion. Nevertheless, it had
become a point of honour to punish the pale-face who disdained
a Huron woman, and more particularly, one who
coolly preferred death to relieving the tribe from the support
of a widow and her children. The young men showed
an impatience to begin to torture, that Rivenoak understood;
and as his elder associates manifested no disposition to permit
any longer delay, he was compelled to give the signal
for the infernal work to proceed.
| CHAPTER XIII. The deerslayer: or, The first war-path | |